Dancing into TRANSCENDANCE™: Harnessing the Power of Movement and Self-Love in Fertility Journeys with Jennifer Joy Jimenez

Imagine stepping onto an enchanting dance floor, your body swaying to the rhythm of self-love and positivity, releasing negative energy, and opening up space for new life. That's the transformative power of TRANSCENDANCE™, as explained by our incredible guest, Jennifer Joy Jimenez. As the Co-Founder of Brave Thinking Institute and creator of TRANSCENDANCE™, Jennifer's journey from battling body acceptance issues and postpartum depression is nothing short of inspiring. Her insights on how movement and dance can be pivotal in our life and fertility journeys leave us spellbound.


Turning the spotlight on the often overlooked mind-body connection, we'll traverse the fascinating landscape of visualization and its role in preparing for fertility treatments. Experience the thrill of learning about "TRANSCEND-DANCING™", a unique practice that can not only help you shed stress and tension but also foster a loving, receptive environment for conception. With Jennifer's guidance, you'll gain the tools to become the CEO of your own health and learn to harness your innate wisdom. Dance your way into this enriching episode, where we celebrate the power of TRANSCENDANCE™, movement, and self-love in our fertility journeys. You'll also get to actually be guided through a mini version of this powerful practice for your enjoyment.


Free Class Gift: www.BTI.com/Dance
Use coupon code:  freeclass

[Jennifer is generously giving you an opportunity to feel more mentally calm, physically energized, and spiritually connected. Claim your FREE 90 minute TRANSCENDANCE™ group class via Zoom, perfect to destress and rejuvenate. No dance experience needed, all mobility levels welcome.]

Connect with Jennifer and her TRANSCENDANCE™ Global Communityhttps://www.instagram.com/transcendanceglobal/?hl=en

Take the fertility quiz: https://www.healthyouniversity.co/fertility-quiz

Schedule a Fertile Health Assessment: https://www.healthyouniversity.co/your-fertile-health-call

Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.susan.fox/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Welcome to Health University, the online classroom and podcast dedicated to empowering women and couples on their fertility, pregnancy, perimenopause and emotional relationships journeys. I'm Dr Susan Fox, a women's health expert with over 20 years of experience in helping women and couples navigate fertility challenges and heal their whole health and reproductive health With compassion, clarity and practical tips. Our podcast episodes provide a wealth of information tailored to your unique needs. We're passionate about helping you understand your own body and its connection to mental, emotional and spiritual well-being. I'd be honored if you would help me by taking a moment to rate and review our podcast on iTunes. Your positive feedback helps us reach more listeners who can benefit from our empowering and educational approach to fertility and holistic wellness.

Speaker 1: 1:05

Hello and welcome to today's episode of Health University. I'm delighted to have my new friend and colleague, jennifer Joy Jimenez. Did I pronounce that correct? Okay, I always want to make sure that I've got the Spanish pronunciation correct. And Jennifer is the designer, the founder, of this amazing movement activity called Transcendance that she incorporates into her programs that are called Vibrant Healthy Living. I had to take a peek and she's going to share with us today an experience of Transcendance and we're going to speak to why movement is so critical for women and couples who want to have children to open up that aspect of themselves.

Speaker 1: 1:53

We're a little bound up in our bodies as we pursue our desire to grow a family and follow some of the traditional or the more modern methods, and I think that tapping into our innate ability to open up these luscious levels of ourselves will only serve to enhance. Whatever your experience, however, you decide to grow your family. So thank you and welcome Jennifer. Did I miss anything? Please add lib to. However, I just introduced you. No, you did a great job. The list of how to get it all.

Speaker 2: 2:29

Yeah, no, fantastic job. I love your work, dr Susan, and just really loving the opportunity to talk about how to really utilize our modern medicine, but yet, to quote you, not throughout the baby with the bathwater that we are born with this innate wisdom. I believe we have an inner physician within each and every one of us and it's our opportunity as humans, and especially as women, to be the CEOs of our own health and to really recognize that we are wired for wellness and sometimes our modern ways and our very hectic and fast-paced lifestyle, as well as the messages that we receive as women from a very young age, particularly in the Western world, about all the ways our body isn't okay, just the way it is, and so it's really I'm taking a moment because I listened to your introduction of your background, how you became involved in this work, in this transcendent work.

Speaker 1: 3:38

You opened to sharing a little bit about how that occurred for you, because I think it's helpful for us to all know that this, while we do have it innately and divinely within us, sometimes it takes a bit of a rocky road to find our way there.

Speaker 2: 3:54

Yeah, or finding a podcast like yours, dr Susan, where you hear it and then those that have come before you, that have taken all the guesswork out of it and codified it, can just share it with you, which is of course what we you and I have sought to do is to shorten that learning curve. Certainly I would not wish my how I found it on anyone else, but, yeah, sometimes our mess becomes our message. Exactly, and my first dream was to be a professional dancer. So I grew up in Oregon, actually out on a farm, far from any dance studio, just kind of connected to the earth and twirling and dancing, and then we would drive by this dance studio every day, through Beaverton Dance Studio, and I would beg my parents to take me in there and to learn everything I could about the dance world. So I moved internationally, studied internationally, did become a professional modern dancer.

Speaker 2: 4:55

In that training, particularly 25 years ago, especially the body acceptance, the whole trend was not happening 25 years ago like it is today. So I received a lot of negative messages about my body not being the size I'm more of a curvy, naturally woman. And so it was constant deprivation, starvation, punishment and just really turning off all of my bodies in eight natural signals and I know I'm not alone, even if you're not in the fitness or dance world. I mean so many women hold their urine beyond a place that's healthy because they've turned off those natural signals, or we don't eat when we're healthy or we. There's a lot of overs and unders. We under eat, we overeat. There's these human behaviors that are coping mechanisms in a runway. For me it was starvation, so I under ate chronically, so I didn't even know what it really felt like to be hungry, and because I'd completely turned that off in so many ways and.

Speaker 2: 6:10

But I got pregnant and I was very blessed. It's interesting the whole fertility landscape because I had family members who didn't have it quite as easy at the beginning and watching that whole road and the pain around that is just for heart wrenching of clients and students that I've worked with who've also had very challenging and rocky road with fertility. For me it was the birthside that was the challenge. So pregnancy was pretty easy and getting pregnant and then I wanted a natural birth but because and I didn't know this consciously or intellectually, but I was so resistant to my body and I had such a abusive relationship with my body that when I went to actually give birth naturally which is a very innate inborn ability, that we've been birthing babies for thousands of years, and I was in such restriction that it caused a 50 hour labor and to the point where my doctor he looked at me and said so, c-section, epidural, what's your choice? And so I opted for the epidural, which I didn't want.

Speaker 2: 7:31

I really felt like a massive failure, even though here I am holding this beautiful brandy life. I was in a lot of baby blues and some postpartum depression from that whole experience, but it was the greatest gift and time some of our what we think at the time feels like a somewhat failure, even if it means not getting pregnant when you think you should easily get pregnant. Just that whole road right the road that's the not-expected one Right Leads us to the capital, a portal, exactly, it was very much a portal. So that led me to learning everything I could about the mind-body connection, which led me to, of course, as a dancer, to modalities that included connecting the mind, reconnecting the mind, the body and the spirit, and that led to multiple mentors in the arena of conscious dance, and actually it's one of the only modalities that I have found that mimics. If you think about the love-making process, if you think about the birthing process. You are not sitting still in meditation, making no sound.

Speaker 1: 8:44

You are definitely moaning you are moving, you are undulating.

Speaker 2: 8:50

Yes, and it's pleasure, right, and for me that word pleasure mimics joy. It's this feeling of rapture, freedom, static energy moving through my body and conscious. Dance was really one of the first places that I began to activate, unlock and unleash that energy in nature's form, using music, vocalization was a big thing that healed my body and my connection to my reproductive organs, to my sacred center. So my next birth was only two hours Vibrating all of that.

Speaker 1: 9:36

Yes, yes, yes, yeah yeah, the next birth was two hours. It was two hours.

Speaker 2: 9:41

Yeah, I was not going for fast, it was all it was learned how to open, I did. I learned how to partner with my body, learned how to love my body, how to just really surrender, not be attached, not be in this controlling mode. I turned on all these signals of life and energy and hunger and all of the energy, the things that I had dimmed and shut myself off of from, and then I began to really, in my own personal practice, codify what I loved about some of the traditional conscious dance and ecstatic dance practices, but bringing in some of the special keys and clues that I had found that had really helped me along the way, like energy healing, the transformational thinking connected to the movement. So visualization, really, as you're using music, as you're vocalizing, as you're moving your body, imagining what Imagining exactly.

Speaker 1: 10:50

There is a reason we use that word imagining because we do bring the image into life. We connect that image through our imagination. That's not a fairy tale, make-believe thing. Our imagination, it is the only thing that will bring anything into form. So I think that's just that is just so amazing.

Speaker 1: 11:11

And I remember watching you we met recently at a summit and I watched you move in.

Speaker 1: 11:17

I could actually get it feel a little emotional even today, because your ability to connect yourself to the entire audience at large very intimately, very vulnerably, very personally, really gave everyone else permission to do the same.

Speaker 1: 11:36

Because we all long for that and we can go through our power points and our checklists and our in my world supplements and the diet and the medications and so forth, but when we miss that singular thread that weaves it all together to say we are life force, we are desireing to amplify life force, I think that your movement techniques are the thing. I think it truly is that magic carpet ride, if you will, that can bring it all together. So I really am so happy that these listeners can hear your story, can sort of feel it within themselves, because I can't imagine anyone is out there saying I have no idea what they're talking about, because it's just, it's not human to not innately know these things from either our own birthing experience or somewhere along in our life. So thank you for having the courage to do it, because it's a courageous thing to be that real in our world today.

Speaker 2: 12:45

Yeah, yeah. Well, I just know as a, as a, as a woman, as a mother, as an entrepreneur, as someone navigating this modern world, but so craving the feeling of being that little girl just twirling in the fields on the farm which I don't necessarily do on the farm anymore, but I certainly will turn on some music and just let my body move and let the energy move me and really commune with the power breathing me. For me it's very much like a moving prayer, it's a spiritual practice, it's a movement practice, it's breathing, it's all of those things. But I wanted to share recently. I just got back, actually, from my annual I do a retreat for women in Tulum and it's all of the things that I love the most.

Speaker 2: 13:37

You know, it's nature, it's movement and dance and drumming transcend dancing together as women in person, which is so powerful. I also do it virtually and have women from all over the world who zoom in and that has its magic in and of itself. And an intimate group. You know where we're really seeking deep dives, releasing what no longer serves and going through these, you know, beautiful processes together. And there was one woman on this retreat who is about to do IVF and she chose to do this experience as a way to really prepare herself spiritually, mentally, emotionally and spiritually for this and really prepare her room for this recept to be this spiritual receptacle, you know, for this beautiful soul that she's calling in as her beat. And when she started the retreat, just to put things into perspective, her, her belly was very hard. You know she had put on some weight from some of the hormone. She had done some fertility work and it, you know, hadn't gone fully the way she wanted, but it was more energy. You know we're so much more than just these physical bodies, were energetic beings. It's all energy.

Speaker 2: 14:59

And what I love about the movement in particular is there's just some things in my experience that you just can't talk therapy. It you can't, it's just you've got to move the energy and the body innately knows how to heal itself, how to move energy. It's just so often in our expert, you know, patient options that are out there constraints, Constraints, I don't know what constraints, and it's great, Very few. And even in my preparing for my natural birth I didn't take one class that said now move your body, Jennifer. The way your body's wisdom is wanting to move, you Trust that it knows.

Speaker 2: 15:51

Not one teacher. They put me into poses, they gave me specific breathing practices, or told me not to make noise or breathe, or it just there was nothing there. Now again, we've come a long ways since then. There is more available today, but what I love about consciousness and these practices is it gives us space for a woman and her body to allow the healing to just naturally move her and move through her, and through even just a couple transcendence practices you could palpably feel her womb softening, yes, and her body blossoming like a flower, like ready baking space Because, of course, as energy, we are more space than matter, and so in this movement, in this softening, there becomes more space, and we know nature abhors that vacuum.

Speaker 1: 16:52

So what's going to fill in the space? Life, however it's going to bring, come to us. Of course we don't purport to offer guarantees, but we will guarantee that life will reveal itself. So that's beautiful, that's a beautiful story, and so have you been in touch with her since.

Speaker 2: 17:12

It hasn't happened yet. What I know is, as we create this space and I know it's what you teach as well the most important energy is unattachment. Right the more we are attached which was really how my birth was I was really working against myself because I was so attached to it being a certain thing going a certain way and there was very little energy of just really let go and let God what will be will be.

Speaker 1: 17:43

I have a phrase that I use countless times, and it is that this particular time in life wanting to conceive, wanting to fulfill this existential destiny requires 100% engagement and 100% surrender. We can't not engage that's a little bit lazy, if you will with life, but we also can't control it. So in order for life to bring forth what is coming next, we have to surrender. We have to exhale for the next inhale, we have to excrete for the next nourishment to come in. We need to let go and sleep so that we can detox and be ready for the next day. And it's all around us in nature, right, Really? The ebb and flow of the water, of the ocean, everything.

Speaker 2: 18:38

I love that. I love that, yes, so powerful, so powerful.

Speaker 1: 18:43

Well, I'm hoping and we mentioned a little bit beforehand that you might be able to give us a little demonstration about what is transcendence and how the listeners might be able to incorporate it into a day or a daily practice. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 19:01

I'm going to teach two. There's 10 phases to a full hour-long transcendence practice and I do teach that full masterclass and workshop a couple times a month, virtually, and I'm happy to give your listeners a free.

Speaker 1: 19:15

Please do. Yes, We'll put it in the notes below so everybody can access it.

Speaker 2: 19:20

We'll do that and in my experience I don't always have the luxury of a full hour to dedicate to practices. Now, as I've grown and practiced these principles more and more, it's an absolute, non-negotiable. So I do, but particularly when my kids were younger, when I was pregnant and raising babies and kind of in that phase that I would imagine a lot of your community is in. Even just one song, one song can shift me from fight or flight, from sympathetic to parasympathetic, from stressed to just feeling more calm and peaceful. I use this when I go into the dentist. I'll give you an example.

Speaker 2: 20:08

So for me, it takes a lot of novocaine to get me numb and I had all of my mercury fillings. Completely, I did that whole transformation of my mouth. So it was a lot of work and if I was in stress which I am sensitive to this work it's just the sound of the vitriol. All right, I'm cringing at the thought of the sound, and so I would literally go into the office and I would say okay, I know this might seem weird to you all, but if I could just take three minutes and do my movement practice to some music, I know my body is going to be in a much calmer place to receive the novocaine, so you can do the work and it'll be way less.

Speaker 1: 20:55

That's just one example, what a gift you gave to that dentist and the team, really, because you know that they suffer so much with their experience, of our experience of being a creator.

Speaker 2: 21:08

So to have a tool like that that within minutes, can shift us from you know, I mean when we're in stress mode, our immune system is compromised, you know, and I would imagine our ability to conceive absolutely is not is compromised, and all of the things that we want to create. So I'm happy to play some music here. I'm going to stand, you don't need to stand necessarily. Yes, what's beautiful about consciousness and transcendence is it is for all ages, it is for all mobility levels. You can literally do this practice using your imagination.

Speaker 1: 21:48

That was going to be. My question is could you just be, you know, quietly, sitting in the car and in your imagination doing the moves and having the same experience? I would imagine yes, and thank you for.

Speaker 2: 22:00

Yeah, absolutely, it's really all about moving energy and then, yes, your body naturally will want to move, even if it's just a little bit of opening up and breathing and moving energy through your system. But I have had clients and even myself when I was I had COVID a couple of times, fortunately, you know, just totally out in, you know, laying just completely, not feeling great at all and just playing a piece of music and just feeling the positive energy and the imagining of myself healthy and whole and moving and dancing, and quickly recovered and I mean it just, it accelerates everything.

Speaker 1: 22:40

Absolutely. I mean because we are then speaking to ourselves. Our immune system and our cells in our immune system are doing the things that we are engaging with. So, yes, that makes perfect sense.

Speaker 2: 22:54

The body is listening. Right, the body, the cells are listening very much so.

Speaker 1: 23:00

It's usually the reverse it's us not listening to the body. Thank you, stop so. The body is always listening to us, yeah, so yes, thank you for sharing. I'll zip it so that we can participate.

Speaker 2: 23:10

Yeah, well, if you don't mind, if you can go into participants, open that up and then share under the more icon. And giving me permission to either make me a co-host is probably easy.

Speaker 1: 23:24

That I have multiple participants can share simultaneously under shared screen.

Speaker 2: 23:32

That worked, yeah, now I can share. Perfect, okay, all right. This is my favorite, what I call the dance of self, or, in other words, the body part dance, the. What we're going to do is I am going to invite those that can stand to stand up. I'm going to stand, and, susan, you can watch and stand, you can do it, or you could do the sitting, whatever works for you. Standing, okay, okay, great, all right, and you really don't need a whole lot of space. I have actually transcended, danced in my in-laws bathroom one holiday because I just needed to get out.

Speaker 1: 24:16

You don't need a lot of space. The timing of that comment is perfect as we roll into the holidays.

Speaker 2: 24:21

Check. You can lock yourself in the bathroom, put on your AirPods and just transcend dance, shake it off, shake it off, exactly, exactly. Okay, here, here we go. You can hear my voice over the music. Yes, all right. So just kind of literally begin to just sway your body from side to side. This music I love because it's very kind of sensual. It almost sounds like belly dancing. Music makes me want to kind of slither through the space.

Speaker 2: 25:05

You know, yes, just take a nice deep breath and let your body expand with the breath and open and then exhale and let the arms just float back down and let just let your head begin to sway or circle. Oftentimes, when you close your eyes, if I invite you to do, you don't need to stay and just let the head begin to oh, dead, it's. Guide and lead the rest of your body. The body begins to move in circular, viral forward, kind of like the way the DNA spirals or a cell spirals. Now just begin to open those shoulders up with the right shoulders and the left shoulder, begin to circle and reading into these areas of the body where we hold so much tension. Think about everything you're shouldering. Let the tension drip from your shoulders down your fingers hit into the earth. Nice, open up those arms and hands of all the light. Imagine touching the walls or tickling the sea. Beautiful, as if your arms are branches of a tree, loading, weighing the brain. Eyes Letting that way, so can up and then open up the spine, just kind of drop your torso forward. You just do some undulation that this torso be placing your hand on your heart, opening up this energy of love for this beautiful body. Tumble. Thank you body, thank you cells. Thank you heart, thank you lungs.

Speaker 2: 27:36

Put your body wounds and dance any way it would like to move and dance. Be where you're feeling tension, maybe even sitting, opening up those hips. Now, race big circles. Beautiful. Now, if your legs want to take you somewhere in the space, if you have a little room, like I do, you can kind of move around a little bit if you want to. Now, particularly these hips and the tailbone and the pelvis can be a receptacle for women for a lot of stress or even trauma, and it's super simple, I think. Just let the body lose some, imagining that any lower vibration energy is losing down your legs, as if your legs or roots is rolling down through the earth. Just kind of know that tension, I skipped it. I'm feeling up the throat. It's time Filling up with light energy fully into the tithus to cut down the body, down the hips, into the earth. Nice, beautiful. But imagine you're filling with light. Then any static stress, slow, vibration, energy is just falling to the earth like dust that falls away Beautiful.

Speaker 1: 29:31

That really was beautiful and as I was playing with you, I was able to kind of imagine, on behalf of the listeners, things like you know preparing for a retrieval, that you know we know our ovaries are getting bigger. Make room, you know, like, let that, let that pelvic cavity get bigger. Make room so that everything doesn't feel too constrained in there. Then, when it's time for transfer, make room, that you know, for that receptive place for an embryo to be transferred and, of course, an unnatural conception cycle. Make room for the sperm to travel up and through your cervix and your uterus and finding the egg at the fallopian tube and making that spark. So it's, it's just, it's all about, as in as I'm doing this movie with you, making room, making space.

Speaker 2: 30:29

Yes, yeah, and holding that that womb space as this beautiful cocoon of love and light, this safe, loving space where this beautiful being can grow and have a home. That your body being a place of love, you being a place of love with your body, creates this loving space for this beautiful baby to grow and to be absolutely love that love that this has been so, so, so, so, so delightful, really.

Speaker 1: 31:06

I'm so grateful that you, that you actually took the time to demonstrate for us, and music was sublime. I love that style of music. It really lets us get rooted, you know, because if there's an ancestral or ancient, you know a cadence and rhythm to it that you, we, can't help but feel and engage with and move to. Indeed, oh well, I want to be respectful of your time and I want to also make sure that if there's anything in our conversation that you thought, oh, but I really want to make sure that the listeners have a chance to hear this, or think that, or consider the other. Is there anything that you would like to add?

Speaker 2: 31:52

I just, I just really want to honor you. You know I just there's. So there, there we. I would love even more doctors like you who are saying all the things that you're saying. I just I feel so honored and blessed that you are in this field, doing this work with women, and I would highly recommend, if someone's just passing through and hearing this interview and considering investing in mentorship in a deeper approach. You know, regardless of whether you conceive or not and I know that that is the ultimate goal what I will say is mentorship, support, really going on the journey of going for it and putting your full heart, your full soul, your knowing at the end of the day, that you did everything in your power, including, you know, receive the kind of mentorship that you provide. You know you will only become a much greater, more expanded, empowered version of you, and whether it's creating this space for this beautiful baby and to have that conception which I know is possible with this kind of mentorship or you end up dreaming up another kind of birth for you.

Speaker 1: 33:15

You will become pregnant with something, you will birth something, and whatever that something is, I get a little of a clump. It is exactly what this universe needs and exactly the only thing that only you can contribute to it. So don't give up on yourself. Exactly, exactly, and I will also just ad lib to say that I am so delighted I have the privilege of saying, within my experience of the reproductive endocrinology community, the doctors are thinking this, feeling, this.

Speaker 1: 33:50

It's becoming more part of the conversation. We used to be enamored with the technological advancements and you know what next can we do to make more embryos, or transfer more, or transfer a few, or do genetic testing, and now the conversation is about who are these people that we're treating, what is happening for them that has them even need to come to us, how do we serve them now so that we're serving them beyond their time with us? And that just warms my heart. It's a whole different paradigm that has me think we're on the verge of infertility busting, not necessarily IVF being begun, but infertility busting. So on that happy note I'm going to wrap it up because I think we could just, you know, dance all day, and I once again want to thank you so much for attending and listeners. Everything will be in the notes, so please do check out the notes for any links and courses and our retreat that sounds heavenly that you might want to participate in, so until next time, thank you.

Speaker 2: 34:58

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. It's such a pleasure. My delight.

Speaker 1: 35:08

Well, you heard, the bell Class is dismissed. Your health journey is unique and I'm here to support you every step of the way to continue your progress. Here are a few pieces of homework for you. One take the your fertility quiz at your fertility quizcom. Discover your personalized solutions by answering just a few simple questions. It's a great way to gain insight into your health needs and find the next steps to achieve your goals.

Speaker 1: 35:39

Two schedule a fertility assessment call. Connect with our team of experts through a brief personal call where we will dive deeper into your health goals and provide personalized recommendations to help you achieve them. Three enroll in the program that is right for you. Explore our range of online programs designed to be accessible, holistic and tailored to your specific needs. With our programs rooted in traditional Chinese medicine and functional medicine, we help you find patterns that may have caused imbalances, how to correct them and restore your health. And don't forget to stay connected with us on social media. Follow Health University on Instagram at Dr Susan Fox for inspiration, tips and updates on the latest developments in wellness and holistic health.